Browsing by Subject "urasuunnitelmat"

The aim of this study was to examine how the students' commitment and assessments of occupational and educational plans changed during a course in folk high school and how optimism was related to the possible change. Plans related to future occupation and education are part of personal goals that people set for the future. Previous experiences and knowledge, own interests and plans affect goal setting. Also personality influence the goals, and optimists and pessimists differ in the way of setting goals. Optimists usually expect things to go well and as wanted, and pessimists usually expect things to go badly and not as wanted. The data were collected with a questionnaire in Finnish folk high schools in two phases. The first phase was implemented in the autumn of 2000 and the second phase in the spring of 2001. In this study, the sample was limited to the students of general education (N = 2793), and consists mostly of adolescents and young adults. The data was analysed using SPSS 21 and the change was examined with paired samples t-test, and also with hierarchical regression analysis. In this study, the change of commitment and assessments was examined between the first measurement, which was conducted at the beginning of the course, and the second measurement, which was conducted at the end of the course. Also, how optimism at the first measurement was related to the change, was examined. The results showed that students reported to commit themselves more to educational plans, to explore more options of occupation and education, and to know more about different options after attending the course but they did not report more commitment to occupational plans than before. Optimism was only related to the increased commitment to educational plans; the more optimistic students were at the beginning, the more committed to educational plans they were at the end. The study shows that general studies in folk high school gets students to commit more to their future educational plans, increases knowledge of different occupational and educational options and also, gets students to explore more options. The study also shows that optimism contributes positively to students' commitment to their plans concerning education.